dccxii

Kubrik Is So Freakin’ Precise (Chapter 7: Dementia)

Marriage.   The presumption
that you can be bothered,
that you’ll laugh when I laugh,
that I tickle you...how insecurity
and self-bloating go hand in hand

with mediocrity,
manic waves of hither and yon,
a few words thrown at mirrors
for good measure.   “We had
our good days,” and then it’s

open your book,
hands to the table
at the Squat & Gobble,
                                                      yesterday’s
mad dash at another broken record.
And there he goes,
wearing his lazy suede jacket
in reverse.   It was a nice sauce.

dccxi

“It’s depressing.”   “Then why do it?”

Out sick yesterday, slept most of Monday night
to this morning.   A sole
banana looks good on my desk.   Last night
Mom sliced up a cantaloupe that looked
banged and bruised, had been keeping
in the bottom of my refrigerator
for a couple of weeks.   It was
knock-your-socks off delicious.   Mushmelon,
indeed!   A ferry’s bright, white stripe of wake
slices a diagonal line halfway between
Treasure Island’s northernmost tip
and Embarcadero Four, there it goes,
fading like the patriotic exhaust
(red, white, and blue) behind the
Blue Angels during yesterday’s air-show,
Mom and I on the rooftop watching what we can
over Nob Hill, the occasional eardrum-popping,
low-flying passes directly overhead.   Like we didn’t
hear those birds day-in, day-out while I was growing up
barely a mile from Ft. Chaffee land, bombs and flares
omnipresent on humid summer nights,
the window over my bed facing south to Potato Hill,
so wracked with “war practice”
it’s amazing it kept its perfectly conical shape,
didn’t flatten into a field of oblivion
between Lake Charleston and the Ouachitas.
But no, there it still is,
one giant blue tit in search of another.

dccix

I am in the chicken

reading the newspaper, when it dawns on me,
Jim Dine’s second reading in 40 years!

Then I remember that I was not supposed to like the Metreon.
But who knew there’d be all these tourists.   Stop, drop, and roll

into a Starbucks just to start over (I didn’t like me then
and I sure don’t like me now).

                                                                            Whew, we’re a little better

now that the dragon has climbed hisself back up to the top of the cliff.
The air’s a little thinner up there, his little blond mohawk starts to

frizzle.   But I think he’s okay.
Sociability does take its toll.

dccviii

I am now a heavenly body.
      -George Takei (after an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter
       renamed 7307 Takei)

What has your short attention span done for you today?
Mine brought me donuts.

The act of putting pen to paper
in order to build a record of existence.

The rain has stopped momentarily and the fog has come, thick.
Averse to change, yet always craving it,

wannabes at The Museum of Physical Therapy.

dccvii

First time with a new year.

How much
hiding behind the mirror;
how much the mirror
and its thinly-silvered ass?

Never you mind.
Take whatever you see
and slap it into the machine,
turn the crank and be done with it.

Yesterday’s joe was pretty good
but didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
The tape dispenser popped the stapler
a good one

and the little green dragon
fell off the cliff, knowing full well
how things can come up
unexpectedly.

dccvi

It was time for the fire moil.

It’s a symptom of reading too much.
And it’s really no fun when you’re 40.

Now it’s the keyboard mouse bum
sucks the juice out of every living thing on the desk,

the dogs bark under the warmer lamp,
and the weatherwoman says

rain starting back up this evening
and lasting a couple more days.

Yes, the wasabi helped.

dccv

There’s a parrot-sized hole in my life.
           —Dr. Irene Pepperberg (on the death of Alex the African gray parrot)

The world has changed.
Oh Mr. Fresh Face it is so
hip to be seen and “nobody to
turn to for advice.”   (Ashbery)
Am I sorry?

Strategy: a travel reservation!

And an echo in the ears,
not quite settling in to the dizzy.
The settling into of the dizzy.
The dizzy us, the dizzy we.

Yet.   The fog fumbles.   We live on.

Time’s always
getting lost inside the fucking echoes.
Like diving into Cool Whip
for the fell swoops.

Oh the world has changed.   It can’t see through
to its next thought.

                                        Its next thought
was a sandwich, a pasta salad,
and some iced tea.

dcciv

Dish at the Feet of Sandwich

(wait four weeks)     I shall not fall
at the feet of a sandwich
get a fish a philospher fish
with fries and wait
til all of your dishes are done

and fish! I just ate a Big cookie
with fries
a Big cookie and
joy in the mail for Xmas

I just want your Big cookie
Just wait til all of your dishes are done

I ate Big cookie
so passe

Joy in just you wait
the SF blue gloom SF blue Xmas for
(wait four weeks) gloom
got it big cookie (BC) ??

I shall not fail you
wait for the fry and fall at the feet
of the philosopher

Do you read your emails?

I shall not
I shall not ate

I shall not fall at the feet of
philosophers (there is joy in the blue
gloom)

I ate Big cookie

dcciii

Short of worn shorts

Avoid permanence
Avoid perfection

“I’m sorry about your hair”

“Well, have fun in Vegas”

dccii

Two women at Starbucks
watching a big man with a hammer
throw his yellow bag out into the middle of Market
right in front of a bus.   The bus stops.
The man runs around
shaking his hammer in the air.

Headache.   Magnolia
at Masonic and Haight
after shopping for memories. Box from Mom
with 500 minutes phone card, 4 pairs of socks,
and a Trivial Pursuit calendar.

Haircut by lady says
“Your mother didn’t let you sleep too much”
referencing my well-rounded head,
“rounded real good.”

dcci

Never end with a bang.

      [                 romance



Sometimes it just takes longer to get there.

dcc

A Social Turd

Do you have anything
for Saturday after say around 3?
The following week?

He dangles better than most;
catches it in his hip pocket
before a slow-moving suicide.

No, I’m serious, somebody who’s
NOT FUNNY AT ALL
decides to make a joke,

writes a funny poem and it REALLY CRACKS ME UP!
WHAT     a     PLUM!         Existing home sales slump
again this month, what’s going on with you,

and why are you making fun of Denise Levertov?
Actually, no, lemme take the 10.

dcxcix

Special Ketchup

Clay Theatre, 6:30pm, forward,
but try to remain laid back.

It’s process, the stapler smacking its lips
(a pure-spoken lesion)....


                Filberts in the afternoon.


Speaking of sex, oxen sex.

dcxcviii

working with anger now let it usurp all faculties
art is not madness it’s clarity art is
vanity means romantic or action

our date has been put off until tomorrow

the new universality of gargoyle hip-hop
yes I did

dcxcvii

your life of mine

airhead vs. sweet, confusing and frustrating
December prissy and pronouncing things funny
you’ve got a right to aristocracy star-fucker

I just got a scholarship of living in the library
it pays well and doesn’t come with a telephone

not mad at anyone but myself vs. the sofa
the spilled glass of nostalgic inkwater ugh
go home you’re wasting my time

get in line for a migraine
twenty-seven dollars at Walgreen’s
yeah you knew

dcxcvi

How far out on a limb
do I go?   Fuck posterity!
(It should be said.)   But
who has enough lava
to singe new ruts?   What
should I do now go home
and take a nap?   Probably
so.

dcxcv

When has there ever been
a lack of “alienation and

purposelessness” (Kit’s posit:
What are the rules of

the game [poetry, whatever]
and what would it mean

to break them?)?   I see.
Then where are we now?

Unduly sweet and moody
whitecaps with spindrift.

dcxciv

What to do with [history]
when everything is NOW
nothing is remembered?

Smart moves don’t always
have to be incoherent.   (Must.
Up.   Lift.   Spirit.)   Self-

important drivel, blah blah
blah, run races around a
few words just to forget (or

remember) them.
   -a rainy San Francisco
   -what twisted taste he has
   -tapping a beat with Kenneth Cole
   -turn on the blue fan
   -tap tap tap

How am I addressing you
This [Nothing] That Is?

dcxciii

a small blister of hope

The window looks tri-sected, an optical illusion
Tall bird, three pounds
Wacky book Christmas party
Piddling away time on solid ground
Anti-academic white trash thesis proposal
Remove staples           i——i       i——i       i——i
Little clots of blood form on human-shaped apertures
Why aim for the mundane
              when it’s cheaper to get a cigarette in Chinatown

dcxcii

the moonstone       that’s a piece
of cheese fell out of the moonstream
                                            —Robin Blaser

Stocks are up after the Fed cuts interest
half a point.   Coco the Loco watches me
snip nails next to the bathtub.   Next is you,
my love, a panoply of opaque sliver-moons
into a wet trashbasket.   A haze over the bay
doesn’t take it over, just relaxes it.   3-
ring notebooks, computer notebooks,
logo’d pens and gargoyle postcards
litter the desk.   Not to mention the
poems.   Vacation dwindles into
history, snow-capped Rockies
flatten into a rainy desert
with great suspense.   A
conversation about how
unhealthy it is to forget,
strictly held via instant message.

dcxci

here we are
December

flashing gizmos
(Coco Loco
and the Digi-cam)
in Colorado

snowdusted
with a serious
breathing problem
(cf. yoga)

supersaturated
coterie or no

                    it’s a
different kind
of prolific

dcxc

top of the class, I’m sure

some horrible snore
that goes on hours
several seats up

taking a pick-axe
to a cello
surely

sold out night train
on frosted glasses

“0000000” (Coco walking)

Yankee Doodle Dandy
on the 3:10 to Yuma

Cagney’s stiff
upturned ass
as off he prances stage left